Forgotten Future (a cyberpunk IZ story)
by SpookyZalost
Summary: during the explosion that kills his enemy and destroys the base Dib is thrown into an escape pod having to spend two years just to get home, but when he returns he finds that 30 years had actually passed due to time dilation, everyone thinks he's dead, and now he has to get his father's company back from an unknown woman who was apparently a shareholder.


**A/N: hey everybody it's me SpookyZalost, I decided to give invader zim another try, hopefully this story should be interesting, in the mean time though I'm accepting beta readers on this one so let me know if you are interested, and as always, CYBERPUNK IS AWESOME!**

Disclaimer: I do not own the show Invader zim, or any characters from that show used, they belong to their respective copyright owners, I make no monetary gain from this and I have no money for you to sue me fore anyway so there :P, anyway enjoy the story!

August 4th, 2070, 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time, Membrane city, old brooklyn factory area, a fireball burns through the sky crashing into the old factory district, numerous fires are set and there is an impact crater, nobody is sent to investigate assuming it's more space junk, the hydro-drones are sent to put out the flames.  
Nobody notices a teenager of about 16 crawling out of the wreckage rushing out in a hurry as there was a self destruct countdown echoing off the walls of the buildings surrounding the impact, he leaps behind the safety of the concrete walls of a nearby warehouse only for the ship to explode mere seconds later.  
"earth... it's good to be home, two years in space, a lot has changed since I was jettisoned by that bastard Zim, why did you do it Zim? Why?"  
the young man rushes into the night trying to get home as quickly as possible to tell his family that he was in fact not dead, however he stopped in front of something that appeared to resemble one of Zim's holo-monitors, only it had the local news, and what was displayed filled him with dread, he had not been gone two years but thirty years, just how fast was he going?!

He ran back to the old membrane house finding the place boarded up, the neighborhood in ruins, and a crater where Zim's base used to be.  
"guess I know what happened to Zim..."  
he manages to pick the lock on the door and sneak into the now abandoned home, or at least it appeared abandoned, Gaz's old security drones began to attack him, looking at them they appeared to have had a few upgrades.  
Quickly activating a device he managed to scavenge from the wreckage of the escape pod he manages to quickly jam the droids before they can do any harm then deactivates them.  
Sitting down on the old couch which had seen years of wear and tear he turns on the holo-monitor and flips through the channels.  
"thirty years later and the only thing that's changed is that tv shows have gotten dumber, and companies are more power hungry than ever."  
stopping on a commercial he sees a familiar name, Membrane Enterprises, only there was somebody he did not recognize talking, it certainly wasn't his father, was he dead now? He had no idea of what had happened but he decided to turn the device off before he got too overwhelmed by culture shock.

He searched the house for supplies finding it almost completely empty of everything edible, he would have to correct that soon as Irken ration packets didn't exactly taste good to humans and he was running low.  
His father's old basement lab was still locked up tight, with all the codes changed, what did he expect though, it's been three decades now since he went missing, probably proclaimed dead in the explosion that destroyed Zim's base.  
As he managed to gain access to what was now called the data-net with his old laptop, the thing only barely getting by thanks to the upgrades he had given it when he was still a member of the swollen eyeball organization, some of it alien tech.  
The first thing he did was get an update on what had happened the last thirty years, first it seemed that his father missed him enough to hold a funeral in his honor, he brought up a vid of one of the news feeds.  
"we are gathered here to day to mourn the loss of a boy, no a man, lost before his prime, unable to achieve because of his delusions, but damn it he was still my son!, and I will miss him dearly, may he rest in peace."

the service mostly consisted of members of membrane enterprises, probably made to go by his father, but it did touch him a little bit to know that his father cared enough to miss him after he was gone.  
Looking further he found that his father had died recently about 2 years back in a lab accident caused by a loss of containment in the PEG MKII prototype.  
his sister Gaz however had gone missing not too long after VR tech had began to kick in, it seemed after he was presumed dead she began to recluse more than normal, and their father was never there to help her so she just up and vanished nobody knows her current whereabouts but she would be presumed dead if it wasn't for some sort of program that cashed her membrane enterprises check at the end of each month.  
In essence he was alone, and considered dead, nobody living cared anymore, his enemy was gone, and he was isolated, even the swollen eyeball had seemed to have shut down after the explosion, some how that event caused a huge burst in research after the realization that aliens were in fact real.

Mumbling to himself he continued reading on, about the cyber-war that had terrorized the old internet forcing the world to upgrade to a new system invented by his dad.  
He read about the takeover of membrane enterprises by a shareholder shortly after their father's death since both he and Gaz were missing and unable to claim the company from their father's co-workers.  
Dib felt angered by this woman known only as Mel, nobody not even the CEO's of membrane enterprises knew his last name, what bothered Dib though was that she some how looked familiar.  
Shrugging off the strange feeling that he had met her before he began to browse some of his old haunts, or at least the ones that had transitioned to the new data-net system.  
He couldn't use his old Mothman account, people would just delete it because they thought he was dead, so he setup a new one under the name of a hacker character from a book he read once, Ghost Cypher.

After what seemed like hours he logged off setting the very outdated computer down on the desk in his old room, surprised that his stuff was still there and decided to lie down on his bed, the entire thing kicked up a mountain of dust from lack of use but he was fine with it, after getting up and shaking off his bed sheets and such he made his bed and crawled under the covers for a good night's rest, or at least that's what he wanted.  
His night was filled with memories from the last two years he had spent in space, the accident, Zim's triumphant grin as his base was exploding around him launching Dib into space to get him away from the base, he said something but Dib couldn't hear it.  
He woke up with a fright as the G forces of the launch had knocked him unconscious forcing him out of his dream.  
He went downstairs glad that his father's atmospheric condenser was still working, drank some clean water then went back up to sleep, an empty sleep that would carry on until the morning.

**A/N: as stated above I'm seeking beta readers, so if you want to help produce an epic cyberpunk story in the future of the invader zim world, let me know, chapter 2 should be uploaded soon, so bear with me, and as always I prefer constructive criticism over flaming, so if you want to point something out constructively, I will listen!**


End file.
